Oppo BDP-831 or Pioneer BDP-LX71??

[Anonymous]

gel:
Given the Oppo only got 4 stars in the Awards issue does not say much for the Oppo.

Especially when on the same page you have the pioneer bdp-lx52 with 5 stars at £550.00 and the sony bdp-s760 with 5 stars at £400.00.

But I have not seen the Oppo only the pioneer bdp-lx52 but if the pioneer bdp-lx52 has out done it at £550.00 then it's laughable to say the Oppo can touch the pioneer bdp-lx71.

Gel, you have to look at the RRPs at launch, when that was and what the model range looked like at the time. Comparing on RRPs alone doesn't work. The 71 is an old model and it was frankly overpriced when it was launched. Some of the explanation in this thread sets out how virtually identical the 71 is to the 51. The Oppo is controversial and if you want to find out how good it is, read Andrew's blog for how he found it. I agreed with pretty much everything he wrote in the blog and if you can, try and get to demo one.

 

[Anonymous]

Andrew Everard:Although, of course, no-one's actually heard the AVR500, and our AVR600 is still misbehaving when it comes to switching between sources and with various BD players.

I haven't heard one either, and my AVR600 is locking me out of most functions at the moment but does sound sublime. I can only hope the 500 is almost as good as the 600, better in terms of firmware. It's what I'd do. That doesn't mean it's what he should do. That's up to him of course.

 

[Deleted member 2457]

If it's so good why is it sitting with four stars at £449.00?

 

[bigboss]

the_lhc:bigboss:the_lhc:

gel's already admitted he doesn't have any experience of the Oppo.

Why don't you try asking the people who HAVE got experience of both players, unless of course you're just a sock puppet seeking to stir up trouble?

That's why I've asked in the forum, & not as a pm to gel & Will!!

May I refer you again to my 1st post..........

Yes but both times you singled out gel and Will as the people you really want a reply from. You don't think that might alienate the rest of the readers who might then think their opinion isn't good enough for you?

Depends on how you take it. If you don't feel your opinion is good enough for me, then, by all means, don't post in this thread. It's as simple as that. I really don't care if people feel alienated by my thread, even though that's not my intention. There are lots of threads asking opinion from WHF Team or Clare. You don't have any objection to those threads. Then why this thread? Simply because the people's opinions I've asked from are not WHF experts?

There are 2 people on this forum who absolutely love their players & incidently, both players are in the same price bracket that I'm interested in. So what's wrong in asking them?

 

[Anonymous]

gel:If it's so good why is it sitting with four stars at £449.00?

Gel, honestly, read the Oppo thread and you'll see the punch-up there.

Read other forums and other sources of data and you'll see that there are different views everywhere. Most think the Oppo to be a very good player indeed.

WHF believe it's a 4 star player. I don't, but this isn't the place to go into that. You have to make that choice for yourself.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Will,

Thanks for your honesty (I know how you rate the Oppo) so I may now wait for Arcam AVR500 if it hits all the buttons.

Cheers.

 

[Clare Newsome]

Oppo vs Pioneer. This thread is shaping up to be:

 

[hammill]

gel:If it's so good why is it sitting with four stars at £449.00?Because it is a universal player being compared with a standard blu-ray player and the magazine does not have a universal category (which I think is a shame as it would have stopped a lot of the furore) Its nearest competitor costs thousands of pounds. To quote the review, which it seems you did not read

"So how good is the Oppo? The simple answer is very good indeed, with a big, powerful sound packed with detail, and a sharp, clean picture, especially when the player is used in its 'Source Direct' mode, simply sending what comes off the disc to the display without any onboard video processing.

It's convincing with DVDs, too, that well-respected upscaling doing a very fine job.

Playing SACDs via HDMI is also a rewarding experience, the player delivering all the extra bite of the discs when compared to the standard CD version, and it even manages to impress with the few DVD-Audio discs out there."

It happens to have been released at the same time as an outstanding Sony which will probably reduce a few of the current 5* players down to 4* .

More from the review

"However, if it's all-round flexibility you're after, and you want that multiformat/multiregion playback, nothing else will do what the Oppo does for the money"

 

[Anonymous]

Well said that man!

 

[Ravey Gravey Davy]

Finds wall, offers head willingly.

 

[Deleted member 2457]

Will I could read every thread on the internet about it I still would not know if it was any good?

If you read all the reviews on the denon dvd2500bt and the pioneer bdp-lx52 they all say that they are amazing.

Only see them for your own eyes do you realise they are not!

Okay so I went to another review website the oppo get's 9 for performance the pioneer gets 10.

For design the oppo gets 9 and the pioneer gets 10.

When I want a blu ray player the only thing that matter's to me is performance and then design.

It seems that if you read the what hi fi magazine the oppo is very flexable, it sound as know that is very lucky for oppo otherwise it might be sitting on 2 or 3 stars.

 

[bigboss]

gel:If it's so good why is it sitting with four stars at £449.00?

Well, actually, even the Pioneer BDP-LX71 got 4 stars: http://www.whathifi.com/Review/Pioneer-BDP-LX71/

 

[bigboss]

Clare Newsome:

Oppo vs Pioneer. This thread is shaping up to be:

Clare, please don't lock this thread!

 

[Deleted member 2457]

The only reason the pioneer got knocked from a 5 star award winner to a 4 star was because of the 51fd which is very similar to the 71 big boss.

What hi fi reviewed the pioneer bdp-lx71 as sound 5 stars and picture 5 stars.

 

[bigboss]

The BDP-LX71 doesn't even have onboard DTS-HD master audio decoding, which is a shame at that price.

 

[Anonymous]

bigboss:It doesn't even have onboard DTS-HD master audio decoding, which is a shame at that price.

I think they do now. The latest firmware installed it. A year late! Unreal.

In truth, if you have a receiver capable of decoding DTS MA then you don't need to do it in the player. I still haven't updated the firmware on the 51 because into an Onkyo TXNR905 it doesn't need it. The 51 was a good player, just slow.

 

[Deleted member 2457]

People with a new amp did not need it anyway?????????

 

[Anonymous]

gel:People with a new amp did not need it anyway?????????

That's right. The machine bitstreamed the audio straight of the disc with no problems and that could be decoded in the amp. So unless you needed to use the analogue outs, or had to have a LPCM output, you didn't need the onboard decoding. You'd have got the DTS core signal, but not the higher resolution data.

 

[Deleted member 2457]

51 slow, so how long does your flexible oppo take to load a blu ray?

 

[bigboss]

Hmmm....you're right. People with a new amp do not need it, in the same way as they don't need analogue as well, as the new amps also have HDMI.

Again, I don't understand this. So, the BDP-LX71 is no better than, say, an Oppo, the newer Pioneers or even a Samsung as it's fed through HDMI. Am I right?

 

[Deleted member 2457]

Is the pioneer winning?????? it's looking pretty good to me.

 

[bigboss]

gel:Is the pioneer winning?????? it's looking pretty good to me.

Huh?? Who said that??

 

[Andrew Everard]

bigboss:Clare, please don't lock this thread!

Why does everyone keep going on about this thread being locked?

 

[Anonymous]

bigboss:
Hmmm....you're right. People with a new amp do not need it, in the same way as they don't need analogue as well, as the new amps also have HDMI.

Again, I don't understand this. So, the BDP-LX71 is no better than, say, an Oppo, the newer Pioneers or even a Samsung as it's fed through HDMI. Am I right?

In my experience, I've been unable to see or hear any differences between players feeding BluRay material via HDMI to a receiver. As far as I can tell, so long as the kit at each end does it's job properly the format is pretty bullet proof. I have never seen any of the splendid adjectives used to describe difference in BluRay player performance. Personally, I think the defining factor in choosing a player should be usability, formats and price. Because frankly, for BluRay, I don't think there's anything in it. I've looked at the cheapest and the most expensive, and over HDMI, and just for BluRay disks I think the players are basically all the same.

The differences emerge with analogue replay, DVD upscaling and here you need to demo to see if the differences are as great as the price between players. WHF in my view HAVE to find differences, but I don't think on BluRay I've ever seen any. Just usability, speed of operation and build quality.

 

[Andrew Everard]

So what Will is saying is, if you just want to play movies via HDMI into a receiver or TV, the £79 Tevion you can buy at Aldi from time to time is as good Blu-ray player as you'll ever need to buy.